Let us exercise forbearance: Northern Ireland, the Belfast Agreement, EU Exit and Rejecting a Second Referendum

Northern Ireland defined my understanding of my country for me. It was where I learned suffering can too easily be the consequence of a single kinetic act; of the delight and the joy of my regiment that comes from exercising the forbearance that Lord Saville described so well. He is the only man I know outside my regiment who observed it, though we were told explicitly by our commanding officer to exercise it:

Your regiment acted with the greatest forbearance, Mr Hunter. I know this. I am Lord Saville. I have spent 12 years on the Bloody Sunday enquiry.

Actually, we soldiered on in the knowledge that 3,600 had died in The Troubles which could just as easily have been called 'Our Troubles' due to the mixed Protestant and Catholic cities of Glasgow and Liverpool too. And our fear that they might, drove us to play our part in their peace to prevent further loss and injury. For beyond the 3,600 buried in the damp, green ground of the Belfast Hills and the rest of Northern Ireland were tens of thousands more maimed, injured and damaged. And beyond them the hundreds of thousands of family and friends so unkindly touched by that tragedy.

So we played our very small part in what we call today the 'government approach'. The Lower Falls in West Belfast levelled and replaced by well-designed homes - built by our government; every effort made for Police Primacy; our every breath devoted to bridging the civil divide of the Orange and Green tribal maps describing nationalist and loyalist, Catholic and Protestant being the role the military played then in a civic society broken by hate and stolen from too many. That was in the United Kingdom, a part of our country then peopled by the lined, shadowed faces of damaged people; not a foreign land but our home, our country.

Death ends a life but not, in the survivor's mind, the relationship with or struggle towards hope; a final reconciliation, which perhaps it never finds. Those are not my words but those of many 'across the water' as we used to say.

The Good Friday Agreement, the Belfast Agreement and the Peace Agreement are all different names for the same thing: the British political miracle of the 20th century. But it is still fragile and tender; made not by a prime minister but by prime ministers, bright public servants and brave people; by the highest executive authority in our land – a settlement to end hundreds of years of bloodied history in our country.

And whilst today we can speak of no-deal, Chequers or Canada Plus, let none of us forget to place Northern Ireland at the heart of any final agreement with the EU. For if we lose Northern Ireland and that Peace Agreement we will gain nothing. Our EU Exit should be a bright and hopeful thing looking beyond which (for it will come) must allay all fears as well.

Like the Peace Agreement in Belfast, our EU Exit must heal our great nation for the benefits of our future outside the EU will not be worth it if peace is sacrificed and the UK returnsto those dark days.

I voted to leave seeing no future for us in an EU which has never understood us. But we have to secure our prize whilst healing our nation and placing that Peace Agreement at its heart.

Here are words spoken in Parliament by someone who understands the EU and social conflict better than any of us.

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne said:

My Lords, the White Paper is very welcome.

We are presented with an opportunity that no other nation and no other British Parliament has ever encountered. We are leaving—yes, that is the case—a vast and somewhat controlling inter-country bloc to which we, the British people, have been the second-largest net contributor and much more for nearly half a century. Our task is an enthralling one. The British people voted to change the course of history. While a referendum is not the preferred choice of most people, for nobody ever trusts the outcome—even in California, the home of multiple referendums—this outcome was very clear indeed. To those who say that the information they were given was insufficient or misleading, I have to say that if 43 years in the same institution does not tell one how it works, then no amount of information will provide the understanding to ever satisfy the doubters who cry for a rerun.

It is tempting to recall that the latest eminent former Prime Minister to declare another referendum to be morally justifiable is the same former Prime Minister who achieved the notorious "empty chair" policy which ensured a full cessation of information and of political involvement by the UK in the EU. It was ignorance by choice for several years, which our nation paid heavily for in finance, in influence and in the information and knowledge that we are painfully re-acquiring. We do not yet know the final detail of our leaving, but the way ahead is clear.

The earlier 1970s referendum resulted in a higher percentage of voters ticking the yes box, but voter confidence in the outcome was no higher. For all my political life, I have attempted but failed, to dispel the subsequent view of the electorate that they had not got what they thought they were voting for. They believed that we were entering a single market; instead, our nation came under Roman law, which has intruded to such an extent that thousands of inherited British Magna Carta freedoms have been swallowed up. Unlike Ahab and the whale, we have no God-like powers to recover them. The earlier EU referendum campaign misspoke—in the endearing terminology of our recent presidential visitor.

No one informed the electorate that by an almost invisible sleight of hand, certainly unknown here, the Luxembourg court had earlier passed a single case law judgment making Brussels law superior to that of member states. This judgment cascaded through the entire EU system, degrading Parliament's unique position in our democracy. Never again since joining the EU has the Westminster Parliament been omnipotent and omnicompetent. It became, and still is, subsidiary to Brussels. Our electorate had no knowledge of that fundamental change of locus of decision-making nor of the coming Niagara deluge of frequently irrelevant and somewhat harmful legislation which has poured in over our heads and swamped our inherited systems. Measurements of window cleaners' steps determined in Brussels for nearly half a billion people is just one of the multiplicity of mini-laws that affect us here today.

No further referendums on any matter affecting our EU status can ever hold the confidence of the British people as they were misled (in the 1975 referendum). The fundamental transfer of sovereignty was neither explained nor understood, even in Government or Parliament 20 years later.

Were we to succumb to the siren voices suggesting a further referendum now and on the same subject, parliamentary government would be dashed on the rocks and our democracy could not recover. The voter understands that, and the electorate decided that we should regain our autonomy, reshape our future as a nation and ensure that there is a harmony of vision between the European Union and the UK and that there is no sharp, abrupt cessation of partnerships or deep, historic ties, and that our capacity to trade is heightened and enlarged, not shrunken.

The statistics today about our economy are looking very good indeed, while the latest PwC global forecast for Britain is even better. The popular will as expressed at the ballot box was incontrovertible, and this White Paper, with the amendments it will acquire as it progresses through both Houses, will reinforce the confidence of the electorate in a powerfully positive future for our country—with a strong economy; financial services at the heart of a digital economy; greater exporting and outward and inward investment; a swifter reaction to the shifting centres of modern power internationally, and a creative shaping together of our nation's future.

As for that pesky voice shouting too loudly that a 4% majority is not good enough and that we must rerun the entire competition, do we assume that they disregard the previous nationwide referendum which decided that first past the post was the way for British votes to be cast and counted? Shall we rerun that referendum too and the last election and the one before as well? That is not going to happen, not now nor in the future. Let us make friends again, not just with the EU but with ourselves. We are in Parliament to serve the British people and to enhance our nation's greatness in her post-Brexit new clothes. As the Prime Minister has declared, we should back the White Paper. I believe we should win or lose any wished-for amendments with good grace, meeting political opposition with courtesy and never with personal hostility. Above all, let us get on with the job. I support the White Paper, the Prime Minister and the Government's policy to the full.

I thank Baroness Nicholson for making it clear why we must implement EU Exit without a second referendum.

But let us not forget the forbearance we must show and the essential importance of Northern Ireland.

About the author

Carl Stephen Patrick Hunter is CEO of Coltraco Ultrasonics, a UK manufacturer exporting 89% of its output to 108 countries. He is a former Greenjacket Officer in the British Army and a Graduate and Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Durham, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, a Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineers and Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Royal Institute for International Affairs, Royal Society of Asian Affairs and the Royal United Services Institute. Carl is a Council Member of the British Marine Equipment Association and the Maritime Defence & Security Group. His interests are in Physics, International Business, Parliament and the Constitution, South Asia, International & Strategic Affairs, Defence, the British Commonwealth and bringing UK Scientists into business. Carl lives in London and Somerset in England, travels extensively in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, has been married for 28 years to Dorothy and a Father of four Children.